One Night in Texas in the Pouring Rain
by BlueWhitney
Summary: Gabriel Gray's respectable, uneventful life is irrevocably altered when he comes to the aid of a mysterious girl. Alternate universe, no powers Gabriel/Claire.
1. Mercy

**A/N: I guess I should really get over it, but I can't help myself. Knowing that _Heroes Reborn_ is rapidly approaching, I've been rewatching the first series, and, of course, my mind turned to my OTP. I had a couple partially written fics sitting on a flash drive and thought, eh, why not? **

**This fic will be AU, no special abilities. Gabriel Gray, on business in Texas, will find his quiet life shaken up after he comes to Claire Bennet's rescue.**

 **Relevant warnings: This is cheerleader!Claire. She's underage. I haven't decided precisely where the Gabe/Claire relationship will go, but it does involve decidedly non-platonic feelings. In addition, there will be references to sexual assault (unrelated to the main pairing).**

 **I plan to keep the chapters short (though maybe not THIS short). Hopefully, updates will be a bit more reliable that way. Probably not, though; I'm awful.  
**

* * *

Gabriel slammed his foot onto the brake, heedless of the water on the road. The rental car slid on angry, screaming tires. For a moment he _knew_ he was going to plow right into the figure which had loomed up so suddenly in the rainy night. He could visualize the disaster. The chrome bumper would catch the person in their legs and snap the bones like dry branches. Would the impact hurl them onto the hood or through the windshield? Would they be dragged beneath?

Even as he braced for the inevitable collision, the car jerked to a halt. For one instant, his body strained against the seat belt. Then, he fell back with a soft _thud_.

Gabriel remained as he had been in the preceding moments: fingers nearly merged with the wheel, shoulders up around his earlobes, lungs heaving air through his clenched teeth.

 _Jeez! I could spit out my heart right now_ , he thought, when he was able to think. _Who_ is _that crazy son of a bitch?_ _I bet he's drunk!_

He opened his eyes, brow dropped low in adrenaline-fueled fury, and resettled his glasses. He saw it was a woman blocking his way. This was obvious even in the downpour, because the yellowish beams from his headlights were causing her rain-streaked breasts to glisten and glow like champagne goblets. She was naked.

"Oh my god," he blurted.

Disconcertingly, the woman—or perhaps girl; she looked young—did not move from her position in the middle of the lane. Perhaps she was as paralyzed as he. Her only motion was to lower her arms, having thrown them up as the car rushed her. She now crossed them over her chest. Stretching her mouth wide, she shouted something, but her voice was lost in the rain and the hum of the idling motor. Gabriel's only response was, with a fumbling motion of trembling hands, to ascertain the car's automatic locks were engaged.

She came closer, bending slightly at her shapely waist to make her face more visible and to better peer at the tinted windows. Her soaked hair fell like a liquid cap over her scalp, clinging to the curvature of her skull, her forehead, her cheekbones. She shouted again. Gabriel tried to read her lips in spite of the instinct which told him to turn his eyes from her, steer the car into the opposite, empty lane, maneuver around her, and never look back until he reached the airport.

 _Please,_ she was saying. _Please._

Later, he would demand of himself, _Why did you do it? What were you thinking?_ But, as he watched her mouth and listened to the _whish-whish whish-whish_ of the wipers, he abandoned all ambition of reaching the airport in time for his late flight out of Texas. He couldn't do it. He could not leave her naked in the elements, pleading with a stranger who had almost inadvertently ended her life. He could not simply call the police and drive around her as though she were a dead deer.

Ultimately, it was her feet that got him. Not her chilled, now-hidden breasts, their image printed indelibly in his memory, nor the triangle of her sex, nor her lips moving soundlessly amid the chaos. It was her feet, resting in the rippling sheet of rain which slicked over the asphalt. Gabriel suspected it might be a crime against humanity to leave her standing barefoot in a quarter inch of cold water.

He had an uncanny notion the rain would swirl up around her ankles, thence to her knees, and finally sweep her away.

Mercy. That was the sole possible answer to the question he had not yet asked. Something in his soul bade him be merciful.

Cursing beneath his breath—the only way he ever cursed aloud—he unfastened his seat belt, disengaged the locks, and opened the driver-side door. Stepping halfway into the night, one shoe splashing onto the pavement, he shielded his glasses and yelled at her:

" _Get in_."


	2. Jackie

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who has read and especially to those who have reviewed. It drives me nuts when I can't respond personally, so to the "Guests" who left comments, thank you! Not to get too therapy-session on you, but there are days when I need a pick-me-up, and getting a nice comment always puts a smile on my face. This: "Heroes reborn has filtered through me and moved long lost and buried sylaire feels" made me lol, because yep! Pretty much.**

 **In case anyone is left in doubt, she's lying when she says her name is Jackie. I'm sure we all knew that. Anyway.**

* * *

Gabriel's shirt had come untucked, his parted hair rumpled, when he stripped the sweater-vest over his head and passed it to her. He had kept his eyes averted, watching the empty road stretch out in the driver's side mirror, heart pounding, sure the darkness would be broken by approaching headlights. He had pushed the noises—sliding flesh and squeaking upholstery as she squirmed into the vest—into the back of his mind. The road stayed empty.

Now, five minutes of tense driving later, he could no longer push her noise into the background. Though he did not offer his name, she told him hers was Jackie. She kept trying to draw him into conversation. Her tone was inviting and warm and totally belied her chattering teeth. He kept giving terse, stilted responses. He tried nonverbal ones, but those made her look at him. When he felt her eyes drilling into his tight jaw, the negligible distance between him and his unexpected passenger seemed to shrink. He wished the car was twice as wide.

"Where you from?" she asked in an unmistakable drawl. Pulling her knees up, she tucked them beneath the roomy brown vest. She wore it like an overlarge, too-short smock. "Not Texas."

"No, Queens," he affirmed. "New York."

"I know where Queens is." She smiled and tried to towel her hair dry with a bit of the vest, but lifting it left her body exposed beneath the waist. The sight, viewed in his periphery, compelled Gabriel to inquire for the second time:

"Where am I taking you, Jackie?"

"Where you going?" was her evasive and irritating reply.

"Where do you _liv_ e?" he asked pointedly.

Jackie faced forward. The animation left her features all at once, as if she could just turn it on and off with a switch. She followed the to and fro arc of the wipers for a long moment.

"I can't go home," she said. "I mean—not tonight."

Gabriel sucked in a deep breath and blew it out in a heavy, wearied sigh. He thought about his untucked shirt, his hair, how it would look if he were pulled over by the police.

"Look," he began, striving to keep his tone even, "I don't have time for this . . . opaque, adolescent melodrama. Either you tell me where to—"

"Adolescent?" she shot back. Her green eyes found him again and caught the straggling moonlight. When they shone, they reminded Gabriel of a cat's eyes. "Is _that_ why you're so nervous? Calm _down._ I'm eighteen."

At that, he allowed his chin to swivel in her direction. His brown eyes flicked up and down her body, from the top of her head to the tiny, chilled toes peeking out the bottom of the vest and curving over the edge of the seat. Jackie raised a brow.

"Maybe," Gabriel said, his voice full of dark doubt.

"Good lord," Jackie grumbled. "Look, I'd pull out my driver's license, _Officer_ , but I don't exactly have it on me."

"I'm not sure you have one at all," he returned.

"What? Oh, come on!" Jackie snorted. "You think I'm not even 16 yet? No offense, but maybe you need to clean your glasses."

A low blow which immediately transported him back to _Try wiping your glasses off, Four Eyes,_ which took him to being tripped up in the hallway between bells during high school. _Which_ convinced him rather thoroughly that this girl was _not_ as old as she would have him believe.

"Don't you want to know?" she asked.

"Know what?"

"Um—why I was out in the rain? Without a stitch on me?"

He _was_ curious . . . and curiosity was, up until now, the only bad habit Gabriel had never been able to kick. It plagued him, needled him, until figuring it out, putting it together monopolized his focus. He didn't want this girl to consume him like that. Better get the fix now, before it grew.

"Okay," he said. "Why?"

"I was on a date."

"You go on dates like that?"

"'Course not." She dropped her chin onto her knees. Her hair swung forward in ropy wet clumps, hiding her profile. Some of the Texan lilt left her voice, flattening into dullness as she told him, "I wasn't ready for—what he wanted. Some of it, maybe. Not all of it. And he went so fast. I said no, but . . ."

She shrugged.

"Maybe I wasn't loud enough. Probably, he just wanted it more than he wanted to listen."

Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut for a second. He didn't like this—and yet hadn't he known it must be something along those lines? She was naked, and where there was nakedness, there was sex and dirty and _wrong_. At least, that was what his mother, Virginia, had drilled into him.

"How far did it go?" he allowed himself to ask, because Curiosity, that harbinger of death for so many cats, willed it.

For a moment she said nothing. Then:

"Well, I lost more than a good pair of shoes, you know?"

He inhaled deeply. Nodded. An inexplicable, almost certainly shameful relief flooded his chest.

"You need the police." There, at last. The solution. It no longer mattered where she lived. He'd simply find the nearest station and let her out near the entrance. The wheels of justice would already be rolling as Gabriel screeched out of the parking lot. He checked his wristwatch. Maybe he could still make his flight.

Jackie shot him a look of suppressed panic which sank quickly into anger.

"Don't even," she said. There was a new note in her voice, a kind of warning.

"So you're not going to report it?" he challenged her. "This guy, whoever he is—he's just going to get away with it?"

"Don't," she repeated.

He raised a brow and tried again, speaking slowly and persuasively as he worked his way toward his point: "Don't you think, as the victim of an attack, that it's your—"

"My _duty?_ " she anticipated him. "Screw you."

Gabriel's head pivoted sharply on his neck. When his eyes found hers, there must have been something in his gaze, in the slight downward angling of his brow, which struck her as dangerous. At the very least, she appeared to remember she was at his mercy. She looked away from that forbidding gaze, allowing him to return his attention to the road, and hastened to apologize. As she spoke, she plucked at the elastic hem of the vest, no doubt finding a frayed patch and worsening it.

"Sorry, okay? I'm sorry. Look, I—Well, hell, I needed the police _before_ it happened."

"You're right," he conceded. "I can't argue with your logic, but if a crime has been committed—"

"You take me there now, and I—"

 _I'll never forgive you_. She stopped short, but he heard the unfinished sentence in her warning tone and saw it in the flash of her eyes. It was a silly threat, because it ought to have been meaningless.

Why did it bother him? She was a stranger.

Most people were strangers to him. Maybe that was why.

Loneliness cut into him like the keen edge of a blade. The whole trip to Texas, he'd barely spoken to anyone. Certainly the most in-depth discussion he'd had was a chat about the quirks of collectors with the antique dealer who'd packaged his New York buyer's purchase with such loving care.

And to whom was Gabriel going home? More accurately, to what? There were hundreds of books on the shelves in his apartment. There was a solitary cup collecting dust on the table. The whistle of the tea kettle would be like the first voice welcoming him home.

Having a girl in the car with him was hardly an unforgivable act. She needed him. He was performing a service. Just . . . he didn't want anyone to _see_ him performing it, that was all. The clean-minded would call it modesty.

"You're kind of my hero," said the girl.

He looked to the right to find Jackie giving him doe eyes. Big, adoring, well-practiced ones. _Very_ well practiced. He was not deceived, nor was he charmed. Not much, anyway. Still, she had said the perfect thing at the precise opportune moment; that was undeniable.

"Please don't take me to the cops," she pleaded. "And please don't take me home. Let me crash with you just for tonight. In the morning, I'm gone. _Gone_ gone. Like a Cinderella thing, you know? You won't find me even if you look. So . . . why not? Who's gonna know?"

Gabriel shook his head, but the sentimental, merciful part of him was hard at work again, eager to side with the girl.

 _Jeez, it's one night_. _I'll be gone tomorrow, too. She'll be home again. If not home, somewhere she can relax and get her mind around all this. What happened to her is . . . is terrible. Ugly and dehumanizing and just cruel. She probably needs some kindness. Some understanding. I'm surprised she even trusts me after what happened. Her date. And my god . . . I'm in Texas, thousands of miles from home. She's right. Nobody will ever know._

She was already looking at him, so he relented nonverbally, with a nod. He felt, rather than saw, her smile, though he imagined that her teeth shone like her cat's eyes.

"Thank you," she breathed.


	3. Effortlessly Beautiful

"Look, I don't have anything for you to wear," Gabriel said as soon as he had locked the door and sent his suitcase bouncing onto the worn springs of the motel bed. He had gone back to the same establishment and checked in for another night, requesting a double. There were so many vacancies, and the proprietor seemed so uninterested in even Gabriel's face that the watchmaker felt secure no one would notice the half-dressed girl going in before him. "I mean, nothing clean. I was only supposed to be here a day and a half."

"This'll do." Jackie ran her arms over the vest. Here, under the yellow light, she could make out the subtle zig-zag pattern in the material, thin black lines over brown.

He observed her, mouth slightly parted.

"No, that's not going to work," he decided.

Maybe she didn't notice. The vest was long enough to hide her ass and the topmost parts of her thighs, so she probably felt concealed. When she moved her upper body, however, it became highly apparent that the arm holes were the chinks in the armor. When she turned toward the square, unframed mirror on the wall and lifted her arms to rake her fingers through her tangled hair, she unwittingly exposed a side view of one breast. Gabriel felt a quick heavy rush in his groin and turned to his suitcase, throwing the latch.

"Here." He reached her yesterday's shirt, a cream-white long sleeve with a missing button. He had never felt the need to throw it out, because the cotton had that soft, worn-in feeling which came with much bleaching, nor had he ever gotten around to replacing the button, as the vest covered it.

"Can I use the shower?" she asked, accepting the shirt. He felt his knuckles brush hers, bare skin shielded by the soft threading, and it occurred to him that he had not touched her, not even a faint brush of elbow when the sweater vest changed hands in the car.

Absently, she lifted the garment and pressed it briefly to her nose. Gabriel felt another twinge of involuntary arousal and was, this time, totally nonplussed by his response. He only hoped the shirt didn't stink. The cold spring rain hadn't come till today. Yesterday, the full Texan sun had been blazing overhead. Maybe it would smell like his deodorant, spicy and invigorating.

"The shower?" she asked again.

"Sure."

She disappeared through the cheap press-wood door. When the lock turned, Gabriel pulled out his phone and dialed. Virginia picked up after one-and-a-half rings.

He talked to his mother for longer than he normally would have. He could hear the girl in there, in the shower, washing off the real evidence and the imaginary filth that would take more than the tiny motel soaps and weak stream from the showerhead. Again and again, the image of Jackie standing naked in the rain returned to him, her flat belly shining, nipples pearled and dripping, and shame followed.

He kept forcibly reminding himself that she had just been assaulted. Assaulted, because the word _rape_ brought ugly, violent noises and visions and scents to him, sweat and blood and other fluids, and the bottoms of her chilled feet with a pair of big, cleated boots between them, digging into the mud and pushing it into wet hills. He would follow her ankles and calves. When he arrived at her knees, a chill would run up his spine, and he would reiterate, _assaulted, assaulted_ , to regain the safe distance of sanitized language.

Then he would wonder-against his will-whether she was behaving normally. That is, as a victim of assault ought to behave. Which was unfair, and he loathed himself for questioning her story when he had no basis of judgment. There was no _normal_. The act in and of itself was abnormal, evil. She was almost certainly traumatized. Maybe she was in shock.

 _Maybe she's lying._

So he talked to Virginia for a good ten minutes, explaining that a storm system had moved in and delayed his flight. He let her warm, loving, excessively protective tones wrap him up in familiarity, something like being wound in a coarse woolen blanket. He fended off her concerns as they swarmed him, batting one aside after another, smiling because it was normal. This was his life, quiet, banal.

He had just managed to banish the image of the cleated boots when the shower cut off. The girl's footsteps reached his ears, followed by the noisy hum of a hair dryer.

"I have to go now," Gabriel told Virginia. "I'm tired. Anyway, I want to have another look at the timepiece before morning. I'm not sure I packaged it right."

A total lie. He had shielded and boxed the little clock with the loving concern of a father swaddling his newborn son.

"Are you well?" asked Virginia. "Did you catch a spring cold? Do you have allergies? They have different allergens down there, I'm sure. For all their talk about clean country air-"

"Mom, I'm fine. What are you talking about?"

"You're whispering."

Oh. He realized she was right. He was keeping his voice low, afraid Jackie might poke her head out of the bathroom and speak if she heard him, thereby revealing her presence.

"Uh-Am I? I think it must be the signal-"

The bathroom door opened, and Jackie emerged, eyes cast down to where she was pinching the shirt shut over her navel.

"Hey, this shirt has a button off," she said. Her voice sounded shockingly loud and abrupt to Gabriel, who threw up a hand and gestured for silence. Jackie continued for a couple seconds before taking note. "Do you have a safety pin or something I could-?"

She saw him then and stopped with a look of wide-eyed apology, clamping her hand over her lips.

"No-no, of _course_ not," Gabriel spoke with brusque reassurance into the phone. He bustled past her and flicked on the old television set which sat on a small table next to the mini-fridge. "It's the TV. I'm bringing you a snow-globe, something new for your collection. You don't need to know what everything costs. Yes. No. Of course I will. You know I will. I always do. Yes, I do. You just forgot. Okay. Yes. I know, I love you, too. Goodnight. Bye."

He hung up and turned off the television.

"Was that your wife?" the girl asked. Her voice sounded small and serious, as though it had finally occurred to her that she might be intruding on more than his charity.

"No."

"Are you married?"

"Why?" Annoyed, he looked at her and waited.

"It's just . . . you looked kind of panicked," she answered with a soft laugh. "Girlfriend?"

"It was my mom," he admitted. "She likes me to check in."

"Oh, yeah. Moms are like that. So . . . _are_ you married?"

"Again, why?"

"Well, why else would you care if your mom thought you were . . . you know . . . spending the night with somebody?"

He shook his head wordlessly for a moment, then removed his glasses to clean them. A long-standing nervous tic.

"I'm not married," he said. "I don't want her to get the wrong idea, that's all. I just . . ."

"Just don't want her all up in your business?" Jackie tried to help him. But that was too big a leap, even for a stranger. Virginia was nothing if not in his business. She would have run his life if he had been weak enough to let her. Even so, the fight he put up was barely adequate. She encroached constantly, and he allowed it, because he loved her.

"It's just not my lifestyle," he said quickly with an air of having something very personal squeezed out of him, and he returned his glasses to their perch.

The girl nodded.

"Yeah, I guess that doesn't really surprise me," she said.

Gabriel didn't want to know what she meant by it, so he went to his bed and reopened his suitcase.

"I do have a safety pin, actually," he told her, unhooking one from a pocket in the lining.

While Jackie fixed the gap over her navel, Gabriel checked himself in the ugly little mirror. Despite the futility-he was going to bed, after all-he fixed his hair, using his fingers to comb it into his habitual part. Jackie, having secured the pin, immediately reached up and rumpled it, undoing his work.

"Hey!" He dodged away from her touch as much as from the disorder, pulling up from the slight stoop he had assumed before the mirror.

"What? I was fixing your hair."

"I just _did_ ," he informed her, smoothing it again.

"Oh my god, you do that on purpose?" Jackie bit back a laugh.

Gabriel knew she was lying about her age. He would have bet long odds on it. He'd been a teen once, too-he'd been laughed at before. She was sixteen at most, or he was the President of the United States.

She proceeded to walk around him with an air of appraisal. He watched the stiff motion of the shirt against her hips and legs from his periphery, felt her eyes moving on him. A tingling, not entirely unpleasant sensation stole through his chest. "You know . . . with your eyebrows and your nose . . . I mean, not that it's big or anything, but-well, it ain't small . . . I think if you lost the part and combed it-"

She reached for his hair again. He caught her wrist and stared darkly down into her face. Her complexion was peachy-golden now that the color was back in her cheeks and her hair was dry. Blond waves fell soft and silky and thick over her shoulders. The shirt hung better on her than it ever had on him.

"Jackie? You can stay, but this-this is not a pajama party. Okay? We're not giving each other makeovers."

Not that he could blame her for the impulse. She was one of _those_ , the effortlessly beautiful. Beside her, before her, he must seem like a black hole, sucking all the light out of the room with his dull, pallid ordinariness.

God, she was pretty.

Assaulted, too, he reminded himself. Traumatized. And sixteen, probably. And an irritant.

" _Sorry_ ," she mumbled, offended. Pulling her wrist away, she gave him back the safe, sanitized distance-now in physical form, which was even more necessary to his peace of mind.

He wondered what her hair would feel like against his lips.

She was angry with him now. Good. He hardened his gaze, made it just a shade less friendly than the stoic professionalism with which he greeted his customers.

"Go to bed," he told her.


	4. A Cinderella Thing

**A/N: So far, the short chapters seem to be working out for me. I do have an outline for this fic, so it won't just drag on forever. It will probably come in around 20k, nothing epic.**

 **Btw, I will probably keep it in Gabriel's perspective. I love writing him, anyway.**

 **Thanks again for reading, commenting, and following.**

* * *

The rain must have stopped sometime after 2 AM. Gabriel knew this because he lay awake for long hours, motionless on his side with one arm tucked beneath his head. The clouds obscured most of the moonlight, but the lights of occasional vehicles passing on lonely missions sometimes flared against the closed blinds. He could see her, then, and when he could not see her he could still hear fitful, restless noises like moans, just barely loud enough to overcome the patter of precipitation outside. He knew she was having nightmares, and he tensed his oblique muscles, shifted his knee as though he would get up and rouse her. He hesitated.

"Jackie," he spoke in a tone just north of a stage whisper. "Hey. Jackie!"

She only squirmed and mumbled some unintelligible thing.

At last, he threw back the covers, crossed to where she slept, and set his hand on her small shoulder. He shook her gently. Jackie jerked, and he retracted his hand. Groggy, she blinked up at him through mussed hair and lingering distress.

"Dad . . ?" she asked, hoarse.

 _Ugh, god,_ he thought with a grimace. What an awkward damned trip this was turning out to be.

"Um, no, it's Gab-it's Gabriel." He wasn't certain he had told her his name till now, and he shook his head, half-wishing he had let her dream. "I found you in the road, remember? I picked you up."

"Oh . . ." she said. He could see her working her way from the depths of sleep toward understanding. Her eyes were going up and down his face and torso, examining him as though she had never quite seen him before. He instinctively shied from her investigation and stepped back toward his bed.

"You were having a nightmare," he told her as he climbed beneath his covers. "Go back to sleep."

"I just woke up," she argued, albeit quite peaceably. "Was I being real loud?"

"Not that loud. Just sounded unpleasant."

"You're a nice guy." There was a sad note of incredulity in her voice, as if she had suspected there were no nice guys left in the world. Or perhaps she was merely marveling at her misfortune, having so recently encountered one at the opposite end of the spectrum.

"Hmmmm," he replied.

Jackie laughed quietly.

"So what are you doing in Texas, anyhow?" she asked. "Just looking for damsels to save?"

Thankfully, there were no cars passing at the moment, so the darkness hid the smile he failed to suppress. He supposed he _had_ saved her. Really, there seemed to be a touch of destiny about the entire matter-either providence or coincidence, in any case, and Gabriel was inclined to believe in the former. If he had been looking for her, he would have missed her.

"Something like that," he answered. "Go back to sleep, okay? It's really late."

"Really late or really early?"

"Depends on how you look at it. Either way . . ."

"'Night-Gabriel, is it?"

"Right."

"No last names . . . Like some kind of no-strings fling."

"Goodnight, Jackie."

A few minutes later, she slipped back into sleep, and he followed the rhythm of her breaths, trying to lull himself along. When she began to mumble again, he opted for ignobility and simply rolled onto his other side. He watched the window, tracing the shadows of raindrops traversing the pane. That was around 2:10. At least, the digital alarm clock on the nightstand said so. Gabriel did not wholly trust digital clocks.

When he woke, the dawn was come, and the rain had stopped. Jackie, too, was quiet, resting. He straightened the undershirt he'd slept in, used his heels to push the ankles of his pajama pants down to their proper place, settled onto his back, and tried to get comfortable.

No such luck.

He hung his legs over the side of the bed, rested his feet against the tan carpet, and remained thus for a minute, staring at her. He would have been afraid to look so long if she had been facing him, afraid her closed eyes were a ruse of some sort, but she lay with her back to him. The glow of morning sun illuminated her golden hair and gave her an ethereal appearance, something like a photograph shot through a frosted lens.

Gabriel hooked his glasses over his ears, rested his elbows on his knees, and studied her form. She seemed to have no true lines about her. She was all soft edges and gentle, flowing curves. Her hips and legs were only adequately concealed beneath the sheet, the comforter having been kicked over the bottom of the bed. For as long as he could, he avoided the deep dip of her waist. The shirt must have ridden up to her ribs during her fitful sleep.

His avoidance proved futile. When he finally looked at it, the sole bit of naked skin he could see, he ceased to blink and looked steadily-not with any lasciviousness, but rather with baffled fascination.

How had it happened so fast? Yesterday, he was on his way to the airport, no more pressing matter on his mind than the semi-functional condition of the clock. Now this . . . Last night, for an instant, it had felt like destiny. This morning, the girl's presence felt more like a universal mistake, a misbegotten mixing of his life with someone else's.

In a novel, he mused, some younger man-a boy-would have found her. Some young, dashing Prince Charming with a tan and a Texan drawl. He would avenge her, fix her somehow, and then . . . Then, of course, they would fall in love and live the proverbial happily ever after.

If this was a mistake on the universe's part, it was certainly a severe one.

Gabriel crept into the bathroom, carrying his suitcase with him so he would not wake her by getting out his clothes. He brushed his teeth, showered, and toweled his hair dry. Before the mirror, he hesitated. Wiping a clear space in the condensation, he looked pensively at his hair. He found himself combing it forward, forgoing the part. Setting the comb down on the sink with a clack, he studied himself with narrowed eyes.

Hmph. It did look better. Or-if not better . . . Different. That was it. He looked like a different person. If he took off his glasses for a moment, he hardly recognized himself.

Maybe he should consider contact lenses.

He dressed and crept again through motel room toward the door, eyes on her. She was still sleeping. There was a bit of stationery on his nightstand. He scribbled a quick note and put it atop his pillow where she could easily spot it. He left nothing of value in the room when he left, securing his suitcase and the packaged timepiece in the trunk of the rental.

Nothing much was open at that hour, but he found a 24-hour Wal-Mart supercenter. Perfect for his purposes.

Inside, the store was mostly deserted save for the employees and a couple of custodians polishing the floors with mops. Gabriel nodded to the greeter and, especially grateful for the solitude, proceeded directly to the women's clothing. There, he found himself momentarily stumped, and his befuddlement had nothing to do with his serious doubt that she did her clothes shopping at Wal-Mart.

He had absolutely no clue what size she wore. Aside from the occasional ugly, oversized Christmas sweater for his mother, he'd never bought clothing for a female. A glance through the various items hanging on the shining metal racks only confused him. Checking the tags, he found that some pieces which looked to be of similar proportions were sized differently based on brand. What did the numbers even mean: 2, 6, 8? Where were the solid measurements? Women . . . Even their clothing was mysterious.

A selection of sundresses proved his salvation. They sported adjustable shoulder straps, a crinkled, stretchy bodice, and a loose, flowy lower half. He snatched up the frontmost, a white one, folded back the elastic, and checked the tag for size. S/CH, it said. Seemed right. She was small and-though she denied it-practically a child. He hadn't forgotten her hoarse, fuzzy-minded, "Dad?" of the prior night.

He was halfway to the checkout stations when a sense of stupidity dawned on him.

White dress. Was that inappropriate? Did the color white even retain any of its symbolic meaning to her generation? He returned to the women's section. Hooking the hanger onto the rack, he examined the other options. There was red. Even worse. Black, which just seemed morbid, somehow. Was he overthinking this?

Green and yellow. The yellow was almost neon, far too flashy to bring into a situation that felt like a dirty secret. The green was bright but earthy, like new leaves. He took the green.

When he set the dress down to be scanned and paid for, the tired-eyed cashier held it out at arm's length and perused it with mild interest.

"It's a gift," Gabriel said. "For my niece."

The woman looked at him as though she had hardly noticed him before, and he kicked himself. It wasn't as though she had interrogated him. He was a bad liar, and, besides, it was a stupid, unecessary, _guilty_ thing to say. She probably thought he was a transvestite.

He could not _wait_ to leave Texas.

While starting the car, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw his hair was making a valiant effort to return to its habitual sidepart. He quickly raked it into its usual style. Who was he kidding, anyway?

* * *

She woke to the sound of the key. As he entered, she sat up and modestly flattened the bottom of the shirt against her thighs.

"Morning," she greeted. "Where'd you go?"

"Here." In answer, he tossed the thin plastic bag onto her bed. "Something to wear."

"Oh." She dug into the bag and pulled out the green dress. Holding it up, she scanned it, and now Gabriel saw the color complemented her eyes. "Huh. Hey, listen, I'm sorry I can't pay you for-"

"It was cheap," he said.

She smiled, folding the dress in her lap.

"You're making it kind of hard to thank you," she said. "You obviously hate this whole thing, this whole . . . screwed up situation. I mean-not that I blame you. I hate it, too, hell of a lot worse than you do. But knowing _I'm_ what's making you miserable . . . That makes it even harder."

"I'm not miserable," he denied, though the statement sounded insincere even to him. "And you don't need to thank me-although you're very welcome, it's just . . . I just want to go home."

She nodded, and they shared a moment of awkward silence. He broke it:

"Speaking of home, I don't know what you're going to say about the dress. I didn't know what-what you _were_ wearing, um . . . So I didn't know how to match it."

"I have so many clothes, nobody'll notice," she replied. "Anyway, if they do, I'll just say I borrowed it from Jackie."

He nodded, and she rose to carry the dress into the bathroom. Gabriel, having partially pivoted to turn up the covers on his bed, suddenly rounded on her.

"What?" he asked sharply.

"Hm?" She stopped at the bathroom door and looked around, the dress clutched in her fist.

"What did you say? Just now."

She shook her head, baffled. "What?"

He stared at her a moment longer, holding her with piercing brown eyes. Then, shoulders relaxing, he shook his head.

"Nothing," he let it go. "Never mind. Nothing."

She turned aside once more, so he did not see realization dawn on her face. Still, he caught the sudden freezing of her posture.

"Uh-" she faltered, and she wrung the dress between her hands. "You didn't by any chance get breakfast while you were out?"

"Sorry. I should have."

"Just couldn't wait to get me gone." She gave the hem of the dress a playful flourish in his direction. More seriously, and with considerable application of the doe eyes he'd first encountered in the car, she requested, "Would it be too much to ask, just to pick us up something small? I'm starved."

"Sure," he agreed readily, in part because there seemed to be an unspoken promise in her tone and in the suddenly cagey set of her features.

This time, he went to a gas station less than five minutes from the motel. In the adjoining convenience store, there was a cafe opening for business. He bought a couple of cinnamon-caked breakfast pastries. When he got back to the car, he sat for a few minutes, listening to the engine idle and watching the gooey, buttery pastries soak through the white paper bag. When he started back to the motel, he went easy on the accelerator.

His dilly-dallying paid off. Jackie-or whatever her name was-had made good on the unspoken promise. There was no sign of her, unless he counted the safety pin still sticking in the white shirt. She had left it on her bed, sleeves spread out as if she had lain down on her back and simply melted out of it.

Gabriel sat on his bed and rested his back against the frame, his long legs stretched out before him, while he ate the pastries. Looking through the slitted blinds, he watched the motorists and truckers wheel past. The road was still dark and patchy with last night's downpour. He envisioned her out there in the green dress with her thumb up to hitch a ride, and he could not suppress a passing wince.

 _I should have taken her home,_ he chastised himself. The part of him that was relieved rather than abashed reminded him that she'd asked for breakfast. His conscience wasn't having it. _I could see it in her face, what she meant. I knew she'd be gone._

 _Gone_ gone. Like a Cinderella thing.

During the flight to New York, he sat in his windowseat and looked down at the clouds. He pretended they did not remind him of her soft edges and the white shirt wrinkled above her bared waist. He did his utmost to cast her from his mind, happy, at least, that the mysterious midnight had tolled and ticked its way into the past.


End file.
